


Warm Snow

by rainstormcolors



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-12 21:49:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10500135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainstormcolors/pseuds/rainstormcolors
Summary: Christmas time at the orphanage for two young brothers...





	

This place reminded the older one of a hospital. The walls. The floors. The furniture. Everything easy to clean, everything lit by fluorescent tubes gleaming in the ceiling. He missed the softer light of home. They’d arrived here seven months earlier. Two months ago tomorrow, Seto turned nine.  
There hadn’t been any snow yet. One of the workers brought a pair of Christmas cakes for the children. Several of the older children—Seto included—said they didn’t need a piece. Mokuba thought that was strange as he ate a soft sweet cube, unnoticing of just how small the slices of cake had been.  
Mokuba: “Is Santa-san coming?”  
Seto (numbly): “I don’t think so, Mokuba.”  
The children watched dubbed Christmas movies on the box television. Mokuba sat close to Seto. Tomorrow would be their first Christmas alone. Mokuba understood that their father was something called “dead.” He had already forgotten the details of their father’s face, and soon he would forget it altogether. But watching the man in the movie pick up a small girl triggered something inside him.  
Mokuba: “I want to go home…”  
Seto looked at his brother. Mokuba stared at the television.  
The movie ended.  
Mokuba: “I want it to snow.”  
A worker came to corral the children to bed. Row by row, the fluorescent tubes flicked off.  
The sky in their bedroom’s window was black and sprayed with cosmic dust. There were two beds pressed to opposite walls. Curled in a patternless blanket in a colorless room, Mokuba fell into the dream-melt of sleep.  
He woke up slowly at first, but then he realized his bed was surrounded: a snow rabbit, snow cat, snow puppy (though one ear had fallen off), and also a snow lizard with sticks for fangs and leaves for wings and berries lining its dewy back. As Mokuba came close to the lizard he realized it wasn’t snow—it was sticky rice. He rushed over to his older brother’s bed, prodded Seto’s shoulder with an ecstatic palm, wiggling on tip-toes.  
Mokuba: “Santa-san came! Look! Look!”  
Seto rolled over groggily to watch Mokuba prance to each of the sculptures.  
Mokuba: “There’s four!” (pointing to the winged lizard) “This one’s cool!” (pointing to the puppy) “And look at this one!”  
In that moment, life glowed. Watching and listening, a subdued smile came to Seto’s face.  
Later that day, Mokuba would see his brother be viciously scolded by the staff for stealing food and sneaking around at night. Seto’s steel expression didn’t flinch. Mokuba was too young to put two-and-two together, and it would be a detail of the day he’d forget.  
But many years later, as Seto grew cold and cruel and blue as ice, as he came to ignore and reject Mokuba, Mokuba found himself on the cusp of despising Seto. But then he remembered: Seto still wanted to build theme parks for children. And he remembered something else. That Christmas morning at the orphanage so long ago.

“That was him, wasn’t it?”


End file.
